[Fyron]

The idea wasn't so much corrupt politicians, but rather lack of organized control far from the center of power. As more advanced government systems are developed, corruption in far flung regions decreases. Monarchy has slightly less corruption than despotism, for example. Government systems such as communism and democracy have very low corruption, representing much higher levels of control over all regions of the civilization and higher levels of efficiency compared to more "primitive" governments. It is really a corruption of the efficiency of organization and centralized governmental control, rather than how many politicians are accepting bribes or whatever. It is a measure of how effective the government is at managing a far-sprung empire. It is a symbolic representation of realistic situations where a centralized government can not effectively manage every aspect of every portion of the empire. The corruption is just how much can not be used effectively on a national scale by the government. This is opposed to the SE2/3/4 system where every planet (or system, based on spaceports) is essentially a completely automous state capable of 100% effective control over every aspect of everything in the empire, and every state is absolutely loyal to and efficiently run by the centralized government.